


School of Hard Knocks

by OtherCat



Series: AndromedaGate [4]
Category: Andromeda (TV), Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Adventures with Ancient Technology, Don't touch ANYTHING, Gen, The Harper is Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-12
Updated: 2007-04-12
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9237329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: Harper is not quite under house arrest. It's a good thing there's all this technology to keep him occupied.





	

It was another day and a half of tests and questions before Dr. Beckett let him out of the infirmary with little brown and white bottles of various medications, with directions for when and how often to take them.

Some time during the tests McKay had been called away, swearing the whole time into some sort of head set. Beckett had watched Rodney leave with a look of amused exasperation eerily identical to the looks Beka used to throw at him. "You'll have to forgive Rodney," Beckett had apologized. "He can be a bit overwhelming at times."

"Don't mention it. I'd be the same way, in his shoes," Harper said, feeling magnanimous now that all the poking and prodding was over with.

Beckett snorted. "Rodney's in a league of his own, at least to hear him tell it."

With Rodney having gone, Harper probed the doctor for information about Pema and the rest of the Nirandans, and was assured that they had been evacuated to "the mainland" with the "Athosians." Any further information about either mainland or Athosians were vague and evasive.

  
Harper's escort to the "guest quarters" was a kid who looked like he might have stepped out of a old High Guard recruitment commercial. Tall, stiff, well scrubbed and invincibly wholesome. If he thought people arriving from other universes was strange, he didn't let a bit of it show. (Though if some of the things Rodney had said were any indication, it probably wasn't.) "Once you're settled in, Mr. Harper, we can see about getting you some clothes, and I'll show you where the mess hall is."

"Food is a good thing," Harper said, and set the pills on a table near the bed. Which was near a window, which was--Harper had seen some pretty impressive planet side cities, but this was something else. Two things struck at the same time--the first was the architecture, with it's towers of crystal and metal flying up like a visible shout, like nothing he'd ever seen except in pictures from before the Long Night, the second was how still it was out there. No vehicles, no traffic no life. He'd been told that the city had been "lost" or abandoned, but the actual sight of a more-or-less intact, utterly empty city was still a shock. It was dead still out there, like a cathedral or a tomb.

Or the Andromeda--a haunted ship full of ghosts, with the crew rattling around like gravel in a can. Harper felt a goosebump prickle run down his spine. "How many people are here?" Harper asked then looked back. "You don't have to answer if that's against the rules--um."

The kid--his name was Sergeant Ian Sullivan--grinned. "I haven't been told yet what not to tell you," he said. "You'll be debriefed, probably by the Major and Doctors Weir and McKay. I think it's safe to tell you we're a research and exploration expedition."

"With guns," Harper said. "Which from where I was standing a couple weeks ago, was a very good thing believe me." Wraith scared him, but not in the bone-deep way Magog--except maybe for Rev Bem, and even he had had his moments--did. "Where are you from? You sound a little like a friend I had from the Pit, um Pittsburgh--"

Harper spent the next couple hours talking the kid's ears off while getting little bits and pieces information out of the kid. Information that might have seemed unimportant to the kid, but meant the world--literally--to Harper. Earth. Old Earth, alive and well and not blown to bits. It was hard not to choke up, but Harper managed. After getting a week's worth of spare clothes, and two pairs of shoes and dropping them off at the guest quarters the kid escorted him to the mess. People were looking his way curiously--people in white lab coats, and people in uniforms or various states of casual dress. Harper hesitated a moment, feeling nervous and a little out of his depth. "We don't bite, honest," the sergeant said with a grin. "The food line's over this way."

Sadly, there was no cola, Sparky or otherwise. There was however coffee, and iced and hot teas. Harper selected a glass of the iced tea and loaded up his tray with a selection of entrees and sides, and looked around the mess hall, searching for an empty seat. He spotted some familiar faces--namely, Doctor McKay and the dark haired guy that he vaguely remembered talking to before collapsing back on the planet--so he headed in that direction. The dark haired guy spotted him at the same time, and grinned, waving Harper over.

"Good morning and or afternoon," Harper said, and slid into a seat. The sergeant had wandered off just out of earshot to talk to someone at another table. "Doctor McKay and--"  
He tilted his head inquiringly.

"Major John Sheppard," the dark haired guy said and held out his hand. The Major's hand shake was firm, his smile friendly and reassuring. "It's good to see you up and around."

"It's good to *be* up and around," Harper said. "Nothing quite like having the cavalry arriving on time." Harper indicated the sergeant with a hook of his thumb. "Tall blond and military all over there said I was going to be debriefed by Doctor McKay, 'the major' and Doctor Weir. Would you be 'the major' in question?" Harper dug into the mashed root vegetables and the meat loaf and gravy.

"Yes he would," Rodney said, running over any reply the dark haired guy--Sheppard--might have made. "Since you're up and about, maybe after you eat you can tell me more about your ship--the slipfighter you called it?"

"Sure, is that before or *after* you give me my computer and tools back so I can fix whatever you did to it?" Harper grinned as Rodney sputtered half coherent denials.

"How about first the computer and tools, then the debriefing, _then_ you can plug Mr. Harper for information on his ship," John suggested mildly.

"Right. Of course," Rodney said in a very put-upon tone. Sheppard smirked.

"So, Rodney says you're from Earth? A future Earth?" Sheppard asked.

"Yeah. Not one that's related to your time or universe though, I don't think." Harper tilted his head. "Unless you've heard of the Vedrans? The Perseids?" Both men shook their heads. "It...wasn't a good place to live. A...friend of mine once referred to it as a 'post apocalyptic wasteland,' and I couldn't really argue with him about it."

"Well, tell us anything you feel comfortable with," Rodney said.

Harper nodded, and gave a brief sketch of the Commonwealth, the Long Night, and the past five years of his life. As he did, he felt a slight easing of tension he hadn't been aware of until it was gone. Part of it could have been attributed to just being able to talk to two interested individuals who appeared to actually *care* about Earth and what had happened to it, even if it wasn't strictly speaking _their_ Earth.

More of it had to do with the teasing and hostile-friendly arguments that would spring up between McKay and Sheppard, causing Harper to feel nostalgic for the good old days, when it had just been him, Beka, Rev, and Trance. It reminded him of the first couple years after they'd found Dylan and the Andromeda Ascendant. He talked about the Magog and Rev Bem and even about having been implanted but not about the Abyss. He talked about Rommie and Dylan and restoring the Commonwealth, but not about Tyr, or Seefra, or Paradines.

If McKay or Sheppard saw the holes in the story, they didn't pry, their own stories had enough holes to match. Sheppard wouldn't go into detail about how he ended up in command of the military (Harper was fuzzy on Pre-Commonwealth Earth military ranks, and indifferent to High Guard ones, but somehow "Major" didn't seem a high enough rank for a possibly one-way expedition to another galaxy) or how the Wraith had been awakened, or how many people there were on Atlantis. There might have been other secrets opened or closed but Harper knew he wouldn't find them unless they smacked him in the face, because he didn't know this world--this universe--well enough to ask.

The conversation continued after their meal as they walked down the corridor on the way to the lab to collect Harper's computer. By the time they reached the labs, the conversation, which started with hypercubes, time travel and slip stream navigation and descended into the depths of Pre-Space pop culture. McKay was apalled that Harper knew so much *about* Pre-Space pop culture. "There's four thousand years seperating you from the nineteen eighties how the hell do you know what a flux capacitor is?" Rodney shouted as they entered the lab, causing people in the room to look up from their workstations. The computers being worked on looked like antique 'laptops'--though they weren't really antiques, not on this end of time, and had to be at least a hybrid of their own era's tech, and whatever computer system the 'laptops' were interfacing with (which, if they were ten thousand years older than the 'laptops' in question, then they were the actual antiques.)

"Actually, it's three thousand two hundred years," Harper said. "On my end it's something like ten thousand ninety-six C. Y."

"Oh, big difference," Rodney said, and stalked over to a table where Harper's computer had been set down next to one of the 'laptops'. He picked up the computer and handed it to Harper. "Zelenka is still playing with your tool belt and the tool box we found in the storage compartment."

"Just as long as he doesn't break my sonic screwdriver," Harper said absently as he scribbled his password. "Wow, you tried to guess my password three hundred and ninety six times?"

John snickered at that, and Rodney glowered, though his mouth was twitching--in an effort to not smile--Harper thought. " _Sonic screwdriver_?" Rodney asked. "That 'slip fighter' of yours didn't look like a TARDIS to me. And don't tell me you wouldn't have tried in my place."

"Well yeah, point," Harper said as he closed the security report and put the computer back on standby. He grinned at McKay and Sheppard. "Take me to your leader?"

They didn't get much of a chance to take in the sights. Harper barely had time to take note of materials or construction of the corridors, and he decided that the first opportunity he got, he was *definitely* going to find a way to take apart one of the "transporters," to see how it worked.

They went down some steps that opened out into what Rodney called a "gate room" in passing. It had an circular structure set into the floor that looked a lot like the circle he'd seen on the planet he was on. He remembered seeing the middle of that circle turn molten blue and it was like his feet had rooted to the floor as he stared at the thing. An impatient sound from McKay broke him out of his daze, and he followed the two men up to the meeting room.

The official debriefing took longer than the unofficial one. Partly because Harper found himself having to go back and clarify an earlier point, and partly because Rodney seemed to see this "debriefing" as a sort of "interview," much to the apparent amusement of Sheppard and Dr. Weir (and the apparently equal annoyance of one Sergeant Bates, who seemed to be in charge of security.) After the first forty-five minutes, it was Rodney who was doing most of the talking, Sheppard, Weir, and Bates only throwing in the occasional comment or question. "Given what you've told us already," Dr. McKay said at one point. "What can you tell us about your education?"

"I was taught at home until I was eight," Harper said. _After my parents were killed,_ he didn't say. "After that, I pretty much learned on my own."

"You have no formal education?" McKay asked with a mixture of horror and disbelief, looking like someone who'd been told that the Vedrans were imperialistic running dog fascists.

"I took correspondence courses in astrogation and engineering so I could get my licenses," Harper said. "Of course, I'd already had three, four years of hands on training. The courses I took were just for a paper trail."

"Paper trail?" Dr. Weir asked.

"I became the engineer of the Eureka Maru after being smuggled off Earth in exchange for services rendered," Harper said. "No papers, no passport, no identification."

"An illegal immigrant, in other words," Bates said.

"Since the only other way off world would've been on a slave ship, as part of the _cargo_ , I wasn't too picky," Harper said.

"Bates," the major said, and sounded annoyed.

"Sir," Bates said shortly.

Harper really hoped he wouldn't have to go into the whole 'slave world, refugee camps, third class non-citizen here,' song and dance. Again. He was relieved when Dr. Weir apologized for the interruption and asked him to continue.

"Becoming a member of Beka's crew was the best day of my life," Harper said, happily skipping over the less than stellar situation with Beka's _boyfriend_ , and the subsequent Campaign to Protect Beka From Herself Because Her Taste In Boyfriends Sucks Rocks. "Well, okay, finding the Andromeda was the best day of my life, but on the very short list of all my best days, it's definitely near the top."

"No formal education at all?" McKay repeated, though it sounded more like a statement than a question.

"He must be smarter than you, Rodney," the major drawled, looking amused.

"It's a big universe Major, almost anything is possible," McKay said, giving the major a dirty look.

Dr. Weir ended the debriefing with a generic politician's welcome and well wishing, with a polite hint that any help Harper felt like giving on various science or engineering projects would be appreciated. Harper knew "pull your own weight and we'll get on fine," when he heard it, however cleverly subtle the other person thought they were being. Harper thought he'd rather successfully suggested that he'd be happy to help, but would like to get a little more than room and board out of the arrangement, and Weir adjourned the meeting.

Everyone rose, and headed for the doors, which unfolded. Harper was aware of McKay at his elbow, and John, Bates, and Elizabeth going off in another direction. Harper leaned against the rail, and looked down at the "gate room." There were workstations scattered around the room, and techs doing mysterious things at them, banks of computer screens flickering with text and diagrams. There was something oddly familiar about the layout, though Harper couldn't quite put his finger on it. "Impressive, isn't it?" Rodney said, sounding smug. "This is the gate room and central command center for the entire city." His tone said; _I bet you don't have toys as cool as these._

"Central command center," Harper said, and something clicked, as he remembered some of the things Rodney had already told him about Atlantis, that he hadn't had time to process, too distracted by the thousand and one other things McKay had been talking about and asking him. Things about sinking and floating cities, cities that traveled between galaxies. Things that explained why the layout was so familiar This wasn't just a city. This was a _starship._ "The bridge. A starship the size of a city--holy shit, I think I'm in love."

McKay was staring at him, a slight, bemused smile tilting one corner of his mouth. "Her current boyfriend is Major Sheppard, unless you have an ATA gene as well."

"It figures. What is it with starships and men in uniform, anyway?" Harper said. "What's an ATA gene?"

"Ancient Technology Activation gene," McKay said, giving him an odd look. "It's a sort of pass key to turning on Ancient systems and devices. I have the artificial version, but Sheppard's is natural, and probably stronger than even General O'Neill's gene."

"Huh. So, when do I meet the lovely lady herself?" Harper asked with a grin.

McKay was giving him an even odder look. "Who?"

"Atlantis? Or does the avatar have a different name?"

"Wait, wait you've lost me--" McKay said, and blinked in confusion for a moment before comprehension dawned. "You're talking about an AI, aren't you? As far as we know, there isn't one."

"Yeah, but you said--" Harper began, and tried not to grin as McKay sputtered, hands waving.

"I know what I said, I was speaking anthropomorphically--there's no AI, just Sheppard and his amazing ability to make Atlantis stand up and do tricks."

* * *

 

McKay took him out to the pier where his slipfighter was being studied by engineers and computer technicians, where Harper was promptly mobbed. McKay was driven off by a guy about Harper's height with a East Yuro accent. Harper found himself giving an impromptu lecture on AP generators and another one on the slip stream drive, using his slipfighter and the bits the engineers and techs had taken out of it as examples. In return, he learned the basics of wormhole physics, naquadah generators, and basic circuitry repair and maintenance of Ancient devices.

After talking himself hoarse, a cute girl with dark hair and glasses that made her brown eyes seem huge in her round face fussed at him to sit down and rest a little ways from the slipfighter and he watched the sunlight dance on slate blue and gray waves as far as the eye could see.

A few of the engineers disappeared, and came back with a picnic lunch, passing around sandwiches and plastic bottles of "Athosian" iced tea and fruit juice. There was a decided work-party atmosphere that made Harper miss Höhne--and most of the Perseids he'd known--with a sharp pang. It was question and answer, answer and question until the sun started to go down, the sky lighting up in purple and gold with red clouds.

Harper was watching the sun set, and the first few stars of the evening come out when he heard someone call his name. He turned and saw Major Sheppard coming toward him. He was in the company of a gorgeous warrior type with auburn hair and a complexion that reminded him a little of Rommie's skin tone. After a few seconds he placed her. "Hey, I know you! You're the lovely and as yet unintroduced vision of warriorly kick-assedness who helped save mine." He pretended to take a cap off and bowed. "If there's any way I can repay you, just let me know," he said, and gave her his best suggestive smirk.

The woman's brows lifted at his little speech, and turned a 'did you put him up to this?' look at Sheppard, who returned the look with one that said 'no, but I wish I had.' "Harper, this is Teyla," Sheppard said with a slight grin. "Teyla, you've already met Harper--"

"But I was busy tossing my cookies," Harper interjected.

"But he was busy tossing his cookies at the time," Sheppard said agreeably.

"I am pleased to meet you," Teyla said. "Pema and Sulan have told me a great deal about you. If you are feeling well enough, I and Major Sheppard can take you to the mainland to see them."

Harper tried not to bounce, though he wasn't entirely successful. "That'd be great, just give me a second?" He worked his way through the crowd and rescued both his computer and toolbelt from Radek and his team. "Okay, I'm ready. Where to from here?"

"Puddlejumper bay," Sheppard said.

"When we found you," Teyla said once they were seated in the puddlejumper, "you called me 'Rommie,' may I ask who she was?"

Harper looked up from the blocky keypad device that he'd been studying. He grinned at her. "I did? It must have been your air of warriorly fortitude." There was a sound from Sheppard that sounded like a choked off laugh.

"She was a warrior then?" Teyla asked as the puddlejumper rose without a hint of movement (except for visual via the windshield.)

"She was the avatar of a war ship, so in a way, yeah," Harper said, and frowned a little, hearing at the same time *divine incarnation* interposed over the word "avatar". Teyla's eyebrows rose at this. "She was an artificial intelligence--a sentient computer--an avatar in this case is a machine with a human like form--an android, who's more or less an extension of the artificial intelligence, the AI."

"And I remind you of--her?" Teyla asked a little hesitantly, as if she weren't quite sure of what to think of being compared to a computer.

The major looked back at them. "Rodney mentioned something about avatars--that you thought Atlantis had an AI?"

Harper nodded. "Your city is a very large complex of interlocked systems, and on top of that, it's a starship. Something that big would need an AI to keep all those systems running smoothly, you *could* do it with just a engineer and maintenance crew and non-sentient computers, but it'd be more work because a non-sentient is only as good as the programmer or technician using it. A full AI in the other hand can usually tell you when you've done something bone-headed, and will have either directed you to the trouble area, or already fixed it by the time he or she's done reading you the riot act." He grinned at Teyla. "Rommie was the avatar of the Andromeda Ascendant, the ship I was the engineer of. She was about your height, and your complexion. Ship or avatar, she was bad, brave and beautiful."

"I see," Teyla said with a smile, and asked a series of leading questions that Harper was only too happy to follow, since it was about one of his favorite subjects, the Andromeda Ascendant.

The landing pad was a little clearing near a tent-town, and Pema was waiting at the edge of the clearing in the company of Sulan and a oddly familiar tall guy named Halling, who seemed to be the leader of the community. Halling talked about his Anscestors the way Harper remembered Rev Bem talking about the Divine, so he thought Halling might be some kind of clergy.

After an exchange of names, and brief welcome from Halling, Pema dragged him off to introduce him to some paternal cousins several times removed, and by the time Teyla and Sheppard caught them up, Pema's cousins were teaching Harper a game that involved lining up tiles with glyphs on them in a specific order.

"Those look like gate symbols," Sheppard said, peering over Harper's shoulder.

"The game is intended it aid in the memorization of of gate addresses," Teyla said.

"That would explain why I'm losing," Harper said.

"No, no," one of the cousins said. "You have already learned four home-symbols and a complete address, very good for a first game."

"So, it's kind of like Scrabble," Sheppard said, then had to explain what Scrabble was.

Pema found a second set of tiles and helped Teyla teach the major how to play. After playing and socializing for a few more hours, Harper started feeling sleepy. He ended up crashing in Pema's tent, and the next morning after breakfast they went back to the city where Rodney was waiting impatiently in the puddlejumper bay. "Looks like I'm about to be dragged off to the labs," Harper said, and grinned. "Thanks for taking me to the mainland."

"You're welcome," Sheppard said.

* * *

 

Trying to build a search engine for an alien database on a hybrid computer in a equally alien and antique computer language was a challenge--much in the way a nova bomb was a minor inconvenience to a planet. Having to do it without a direct interface with either the database or the hybrid computer was even more so.

Harper ran the prototype and for the hundreth time, the mainframe rejected the engine and handed him his ass. After e-mailing a screenshot of the error message to the linguistics team handling the translation of error messages, he texted Jill, another member of his unofficial team.

 **Harper:** How did I get conscripted into this?

 **Jill:** You volunteered. ^_^

 **Harper:** Was I drunk? High? Because I don't remember volunteering.

 **Jill:** You talked about programming within earshot of McKay, that was enough. Problems?

 **Harper:** Same as before. See engine load. See engine crash. Get pissy error message in Ancient. Mail screenshot of pissy message to the linguistics department. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

There was a snicker from Jill's end of the room. Harper didn't look up, but he grinned. "You know, all of this would be a hell of a lot easier if I could just work on making an adapter for my dataport."

"So you've said," David said, and threw a paper airplane at him. It struck the screen of the spare laptop Harper was borrowing.

Harper tsked, and sent it back. "Shame on you Cho, wasting paper like that. And it *would* be easier, because I think faster than I can type on this thing."

"You have 'leet' hacker skills and Bates would have a cow if you got into the SGC related material on our computers," Ian said. He was currently losing his sixth game of Vedran Whist to Harper's comp pad. "Not of course that you wouldn't be able to via the oh-so-inferior keyboard."

"The very important question here is 'why would I want to?'" Harper said. "Granted, in a theoretical sense, knowing who I'm working for is a very good thing--on the other hand, it doesn't look good if you get your hand caught in the safety deposit box."

The comp pad chose that moment to give a Bronx cheer, which made David and Jill snicker, and Ian curse. "Don't swear at machinery, it never does any good," Jill sang, and giggled at the death glare Ian sent her way.

"Play nice, children," Harper said, and started picking apart the code to see what went wrong this time. Something occurred to him as he worked, and he pursued the thought: The database was remarkably 'organic.' Files were grouped surreal 'stream of conscious' clusters. Schematics for a space ship might be linked to oceanography, anthropology, musicology, doodles, poetry, and what was possibly some kind of phys-ed log according to Jill and Cho. It reminded him of the way a powered down--sleeping--AI would bundle files; a sort of dream-state triage. It also reminded him of his own special-interest daisychain, files that he'd stored on his comp, in his dataport's library, or kept tagged in the Andromeda's database. Computers with AIs or with VR equipment didn't really need search engines, because the person with the VR (or dataport) was in essence the "search engine."

So far Harper hadn't seen anything like a AI core, which didn't rule out sentries or a sentient evolving on it's own, like the Consensus of Parts, but if any variation of the three were present, they probably would have shown themselves by now, with the presence of "intruders." Then again, given anecdotal evidence, the Ancients didn't use much cyberware, and their nanotech wasn't a major avenue of research.

But if those file clusters were daisychains...

"Hey Ian? Hit the vox wouldya?"

Ian gave him a curious look, but located the program (having become more or less profficient with the comps layout, or rather, as much of the layout as Harper had given him access to.) located the vox icon and tapped it with the stylus. "I'm guessing you want it on 'passive'?" Ian asked. Harper occasionally used the passive mode to record random things that occured to him, when he didn't have his hands free to write.

"Yep. Name it 'cogito' with today's date."

Ian grumbled good naturedly about not being a personal assistant, but complied. The opening notes of "The Lancer's Hymn" announced that the program was running.

The 'kids' were giving him curious looks, so he explained. "I need to run a few ideas by you, and I have a few questions," he said, and moved from his chair, to perch on the workstation itself.

David and Jill exchanged looks. "Okay," Jill said, backed up by David's, "Sure, shoot."

"Okay, question one, pretending I'm from another planet, which I am, kinda; what does the ATA gene do?"

"It activates--no, wait," David said, frowning. "It's a security measure, there are devices that can be activated by the gene, and then used by anyone, and items that can only be used by someone with the ATA gene."

Harper tried to keep from fidgeting as he thought of his next question. "Question two, what's the difference between gene-only technology, and devices with a lower security clearance?"

"It responds to mental commands," Jill said. "But you already know that?"

"Bear with me, I'm still drawing the map," Harper said, and bounced off the work station. "Okay, here goes, the database is incredibly chaotic, but I'm going to put forth the idea that it *isn't* disorganized." He paused, and waited to see if he'd lost his 'team'. They were all frowning, even Ian, but they didn't look confused so he continued. "The file clusters you've been talking about remind me of what we call 'filetrees' or 'daisychains'. Basically, what you might call 'bookmarks' or 'favorites'. I'm also putting forth a not-so-random factoid, computers from my time and place don't have what you'd call search engines; we have AIs of various levels that serve an analogous purpose--or if we have the equipment--" Harper tapped his dataport. "We go in and look for the information ourselves."

"But the Ancients weren't cyberpunks," Ian said.

"They wouldn't need to be," Jill said. "You think they did it mentally, right?"

"Or they had AI programs fulfilling the same function, though that doesn't seem too likely at this point," Harper said. "They would have popped up with suggestions by now. Sarcastic ones." Or maybe not. Anecdotal evidence suggested the Ancients didn't have much of a funny bone, and AIs tended to be reflect their programmers.

"Ancient Computers for Idiots, Databases for Dummies," Ian said with a grin.

"How does this theory relate to the search engine problem?" David asked thoughtfully, as if he already had a few ideas of his own.

"I think part of the problem is that the search engine isn't being recognized *as* a search engine," Harper said. "That, and the engine isn't recognized as having a security clearance, because of course, it doesn't have one." He grinned. "You need a skeleton key."

The kids were sold on the idea, though David was more cautious, and wanted to wait to see if any of the the translated error messages might possibly either prove or disprove the theory. Harper wanted to bounce the idea off of McKay so he headed over to main lab with Ian and Jill in tow. Unfortunately, McKay turned out to be in a mission briefing. The presence of Zelenka *would* have been fortunate, but the presence of Kavanagh cast a very long, very annoying shadow over it. "I think this 'theory' of yours is just another ploy to work on that 'adaptor' of yours," Kavanagh said.

"If I'm right about needing a skeleton key, an adaptor wouldn't do a damn bit of good *without* one, so no, it's not a 'ploy'," Harper said.

"So you say," Kavanagh said flippantly. "If the Ancients accessed the databases directly, we would have found evidence before this by now--and no, I don't consider your 'daisychains' as evidence."

"Right, because the puddlejumpers responding to mental and verbal cues is just _anecdotal evidence_ ," Harper shot back.

"Well, it's certainly not evidence that the Ancients accessed the database with their _minds._ "

"Given my experience, it seems the most likely explanation for the way the database is organized," Harper said.

"Given your experience with technology from an entirely different _universe_!"

"Actually, Dr. Carter has had direct experience with being ah, downloaded," Jill pointed out. "And the computers in question weren't even Ancient."

"Very good point," Zelenka murmured. Kavanagh huffed but didn't say anything.

"Downloaded?" Harper asked, momentarily distracted by this tidbit of information.

"Class-i-fied," Ian sang out not quite under his breath.

"So far, Harper's been a big help with programming, Dr. Kavanagh," Jill said. "He might not have a *doctorate* but he has good, practical knowledge of engineering, physics, programming and even astronomy."

"He shouldn't *be* helping, he isn't even a member of the expedition!" Kavanagh said.

"Yeah, so?" Harper said. "Last I looked, you weren't the one deciding who gets to play in the sandbox."

Kavanagh took a step forward flushing angrily, and Harper matched him. He was peripherally aware of both Ian and Jill flanking him--probably hoping to catch him in case he did something stupid. It wasn't going to come to that, Harper wasn't going to throw the first punch, and Kavanagh fought mostly with his mouth--but it was a nice gesture. Zelenka moved in between Harper and Kavanagh. "Andrew, I am sure you have project to be working on," he said to Dr. Kavanagh. Kavanagh nodded and stalked off, muttering under his breath. Zelenka sighed and muttered something in Czech, looked to Harper. "When Dr. McKay returns from mission, we will speak to him about theory, in the meantime, perhaps you'd like opportunity to stretch legs?"

"Depends," Harper said with a little bounce. "Are we talking exploration, a casual stroll, or maintenance?" Not that he'd say no to any of the three.

"All of the above," Zelenka said.

* * *

 

Harper tried not to bounce at the opportunity to get a look at more of the ship.

So far he'd been restricted to the expedition's living area, the labs (under the supervision of McKay or Zelenka, and the continual presence of Ian) the mainland, and the east pier where his slipfighter was still parked. He didn't actually mind having a tail. Ian was a great kid, and so were his friends. At the same time though, Harper had been used to having free rein to explore every inch of an entire warship, so the restrictions had been starting to wear on him.

After stowing his computer in his room, he headed to the conference room.

The research/exploration party consisted of Harper, Zelenka, Miko, two anthropologists and five marines, including Sgt Markham and Ian. Zelenka introduced Dr. Leon Silwinski, an archaeologist-anthropologist, and Dr. Natalia Aguirre, a linguist-anthropologist. Then he launched into the debriefing."This will be a three day project," Zelenka said. "First day we will be exploring residential sections sixteen, eighteen and nineteen. These sections are three levels below central tower. This will be archaeology/anthropology focused, so we follow Natalia and Leon's lead. Second day we will explore area central to sixteen, eighteen and nineteen. This is 'educational park' according to city maps. It will be taking up days two and three of project. Natalia?"

Dr. Aguirre stood up, and gave them a presentation about the educational park, what they hoped to find, and general protocols and procedures the team would have to follow. The area the doctor described sounded like it would be just a little bigger than Central Park. "We'll map and locate areas of interest within the part before we enter the school itself. At this point, the social sciences will take a reluctant back seat while the engineers and physicists figure out power levels and crunch numbers at each other," Dr. Aguirre said with a grin.

"Please keep in mind that if you don't follow the protocols Dr. Aguirre went over a few minutes ago, that hell hath no fury like a historian scorned," Dr. Silwinski said.

* * *

 

The exploration project reminded Harper of walking the decks of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ for the first time. He felt the same awe, the same appreciation for the great ship's aesthetic beauty. _Atlantis_ breathed history, and hinted at marvels that rivalled those of the Old Commonwealth. The part that almost made it better than retrieving the _Andromeda_ was that there was no Gerentex, and no dead bodies.

Since there were so many rooms, the team only made cursory examinations of a sampling of rooms in a corridor. They split into two smaller groups consisting of one of the anthropologists, Miko, or Harper, and a Marine armed with a sketch pad and pencil. One of the Marines would sketch a map of the room, then Miko or Harper would take pictures from various (anthropologist-directed) angles. Objects that seemed important from their position in the room or because of their general appearance were also photographed, then measured, but not moved.

Both anthropologists had been very firm about the fate of anyone "contaminating" a site by moving or removing any objects from the area, to the refrain of "...and no one will find the body." While pictures were taken, one of the anthropologists would be recording notes about the room. Zelenka coordinated the effort, and picked which rooms to explore.

Harper thought it wasn't too different from the methods he, Beka and Trance had used during their "shakedown" tour of the _Andromeda_ once all the bodies had been given a space-burial. There were a few natural differences, but those were mostly involved differences in motivation. Of course, he had better sense than to say that out loud. He didn't think the anthropologists would appreciate the comparison.

During breaks, conversation went all over the place. The scientists fielded questions from the marines or each other, voiced theories or debated. "Most of the residential areas are concentrated in or around the main tower," Dr. Silwinski said at one point. "We think that the rooms immediately around the gate room were intended as temporary quarters for technicians and officers, so they didn't have to commute."

"They had those transporters though, so commuting wouldn't be much of a problem," one of the Marines said. It was more of a question than an argument.

"Not if they broke down," Ian said. "Most of the transporters are a block away from gate room, anyway. Which is where you start seeing those little studios and one-bedroom apartments."

"Little's kinda relative," one of the Marines joked. "The smallest studio's bigger than my first apartment."

"Has anyone taken one of those transporters apart to see how it worked?" Harper wondered aloud, which sparked a lengthy description and analysis of various transportation technologies. Questions and answers were bounced back and forth, and Harper even offered a severely edited account of his attempt at _inventing_ a matter transportation device.

* * *

  
The educational park gave Harper the creeps. The dead trees and skeletal bushes reminded him of places where the ubers had spread defoliants. The park was split into a nature trail, a meditation garden, and a garden full of statuary and other works of art. The nature trail had stations at various points where you stopped to listen to a lesson narrated by a sunny-voiced holo of a girl wearing a blue smock. The cheerful voice clashed creepily with the ten thousand year old dead plants.

The school itself was set in the middle of the park, with a large reflecting pool in front. The pool turned out to have some kind of laser light show feature that could be activated and controlled by stepping on certain tiles. Harper didn't get much time to play with the lights though. Zelenka put him to work helping Miko and the anthropologist start up the schools computer system and lights. "Helping" involved Miko telling him what buttons to push and when, while she convinced the Ancient compters that the laptop was compatible with its systems. The school computers were being obstinate, and refused to give her access because she wasn't a registered student or a member of the school's long absent faculty.

Once the computers were finally integrated and online, Harper played dispatch officer, relaying information Zelenka had discovered to the teams. What subjects had been taught in what classrooms, where labs were located, where the library was. The school network turned out to be connected to the main database. They also discovered that this school had twenty other sattelite-schools scattered through out the ship and taught the equivalent of both primary and secondary students.

Then Sgt. Markham sat down in a very comfortable chair, and no one could get him out of it. Hair-thin needles had been inserted directly into his spine, partially paralyzing him. The sergeant was awake and more or less coherent, but was also simultaneously experiencing the equivalent of Secondary Literary and Reading Comprehension. "It's like an evil version of every literature class I've ever been stuck in," Markham complained. "It stops in the middle of the story to ask me what happens next, and beeps when I try to shut it off."

The chair said something very primly in Ancient. "Failure to answer the question will result in a new question. Attempting to end the assessment cycle before completion of the task is prohibited," Dr. Aguirre translated.

"Looks like you're going back to school man," one of the Marines joked.

"Screw you," Markham replied.

"Do you have any control over what you're viewing?" Dr. Silwinski asked curiously.

"No. I started out on some kind of weird Bollywood thing, now it's something like Little House on the Space Station."

The chair beeped, and said something Dr. Aguirre translated as. "Interrupting the student during the assessment cycle is prohibited."

"It's like an evil gameshow version of the SATs!" Markham shouted.

"And you're the Indian kid who's never heard of Cinderella?" One of the Marines asked with a grin.

"YES!"

"Okay, why does this thing _not_ have a panic button?" Harper asked a half hour later. "It's a _virtual classroom_. There should be something that gives him a 'get out of jail free' card." Of course, there was a possibility that the chair might let the sergeant go on its own--but no one really wanted to rely on the supposition that the chair would let the student go on "potty breaks."

"Yeah well, the Ancients weren't big on providing user manuals," Ian commented. In the background Markham cursed, and the chair scolded him in Ancient.

"For a kid's _classroom_? Shouldn't there at least be a parental override or something?"

"It was first thing we try," Zelenka said, adjusting his glasses. "It didn't work, though the option is there."

"Huh. Why didn't it work?" Harper said.

"Dr. Aguirre is translating the error message," Miko said, then smiled. "I over heard your exchange with Dr. Kavanagh. I believe that the message may support your theory."

* * *

 

"...But Zelenka wouldn't let her try it, so instead we disconnected the chair from the system, with Dr. Beckett on hand in case anything really bad happened," Harper said a day and half after the fact in McKay's office (which did not look like he ever actually used it). The chair Harper was sitting in was about as comfortable as a chair in a hospital waiting room. "Which nothing did, as you know."

"As I know from just about everyone who filed a report, which you didn't," Rodney said.

"No one told me I had to," Harper pointed out.

"Yes, well, they should have," Rodney said. "Hence the informal debriefing." He straightened up in a way that said 'I am being an official Supervisor,' and put both his hands flat on the desk. "Zelenka reports that you worked well with both the archaelogists and with Miko--I'd like to see you on more in-city projects, if you'd be willing?"

Harper had the definite feeling McKay was a man who wasn't used to *asking* for anything. He grinned. "That would be great--but, I can't help but ask, what about security issues?" If he was going to get a chance at figuring out how the _Atlantis_ worked, he didn't want to knock heads with the military.

"You'll still have a security detail," McKay said, and looked more annoyed at the thought than Harper was. "Sgt Sullivan however has a sadly under used degree in engineering, which should prove useful." A pause, and an intent, assessing look. "You'll also be working with Kavanagh, if that's not a deal breaker."

Harper considered that for about a tenth of a second, and grinned. "I can get along with Kavanagh, if he can get along with me." Compared to a Magog or a Nietszchean, getting along with Kavanagh would be a piece of cake.


End file.
